12.26.2008

Initially Bei grabbed a fistful of my hair to pull me out of the tunnel. Thanks buddy, but I'll handle it from here...just go dial 911, when mom gets stuck.

Bei opening presents from Cliff, Laura, Brian and Kyle

Bei and Aunt Julie doing dishes together

Bei and Katherine groovin to Veggie Tales

Kids playing downstairs(Katherine, Ellie, Bei and Kyle)

The next GQ model

Bei helping mom cook Christmas Eve dinner. He ate most of the coleslaw dressing as we were making it. So the slaw might have been a little dry.

The Christmas merriment continued back in the Twin Cities. Dan's parents, sister, Julie and her kids, and some family friends, Cliff and Laura came over Christmas Eve. Christmas Day we went to Dan's sisters house for dinner. Then today we toured a historic building in St. Paul, with Dan's family. It has been a wonderful Christmas!

Bei's reaction on Christmas was pretty low key. His cousin Emma had told him on Christmas Eve to run out to the tree when he woke up because there would be lots of presents under it for him. I had done no prepping for him, and never mentioned Christmas morning to him and I still haven't even mentioned Santa to him yet. It was interesting on Christmas morning, he woke up and he kept looking out of the bedroom door and trying to see if there was anything there. He definitely remembered what Emma had told him the previous night. We went out to the tree and he was much more interested in the present that Emma had given him the night before, which is a 12 foot tunnel with added tents to it. It super long!!! We had to coax him into unwrapping his presents. One of the things that I got him was a toy that he loves to play at Huckleberry's house. It is a shake and crash race car set. That was pretty much the only thing that he was interested in and the tunnel. Two of the other toys are still in there boxes, one of them is another race set crash thing and I think I will take it up to the cabin. The other thing is a pirate ship with little characters. Hopefully on a snowy day when he is bored, I can pull it out and it will be interesting to him. I bought him some little people pull along luggage and I plan on taking that back, he didn't seem interested in it at the least.

Christmas morning felt very emotional for me. I just felt so incredibly grateful to have Bei in my life. I'm still in awe when I think about how we came together. I feel like I was "chosen" to take care of this very special and precious child. I realize what a priviledge and an honor it is to have him in my life. During the Christmas season I think of it from a higher perspective and wonder how and why God chose us? But it all seems so right, he was meant to be our child in every single way. I don't think I could love a child more than I love him. He is the most perfect kid for us. We feel very blessed and are very thankful to God!

He also loves his Thomas the Choo Choo train set also from Grandma Sandy.

A wide awake Bei is playing with his Elefun toy. He was quite the experimenting Scientist. He loved to put different things in the elephants blower, gum wrappers, paper clips, anything he could find to see what would blow out. He really loves this toy from Grandma Sandy!

Helloooo...Dan...we are opening presents...hide and seek is over...

Aunt Nanette knew gum would be a hit with Bei...not so much with his mom...thanks Nanette!

Our first Christmas together started on Thursday, December 18th when we headed down to the Chicago area to spend it with my side of the family. We stayed with my brother Nick's family and Bei LOVED the girls! Thursday night, Chicago was hit with 12 inches of snow and we tried to take Bei sliding but the snow was too deep. However, the girls would bury themselves in the snow and then jump out at Bei once he called their name. They were troopers, I definitely didn't want to do it! Toooooo Cold!

Saturday my mom took us all out to a restaurant for lunch and then we went to her house to open presents and have a late dinner. Bei fell asleep in the car on the way over and was still pretty sleepy during the present opening. The kids were great about letting Bei open their presents too. It was a great beginning of the Christmas holiday season and we loved being with everybody. We are also excited to find out that there will be another addition to our side of the family because Nick's wife, Kathy is pregnant! So Bei is going to have a little cousin closer in age! Yeah Nick and Kathy!!! We are keeping them in our prayers!

12.17.2008

On Tuesday, Bei and I went over to Dan's cousins, (who is also a very close friend of ours) house to make Christmas cookies with Kathy. He loved it! He was asleep by the time, we hit I94, making Christmas cookies is exhausting to a little man.

I want to mention that I know that Bei will never be home schooled by me. I think I'm holding the kid back. Remember how I said that he can count to 5? The other day Dan was working on a built in book case and Bei grabbed his tool box that had red electrical caps in it. He took them out and I lined them up and Bei started to count them individually. Well, he got to 5, and I expected he would stop, but then he kept going to 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10! I went to Toddler Time last thursday and came across two, two year olds that were saying all of their ABC's. Bei recognizes some letters, but is not even close to saying his ABC's. Since he has only heard English for 7 months, I figure he is still learning the language. I can tell he really wants to start talking in full sentences. On Sunday night he bumped his head and got a big goose egg. On Monday afternoon, we were in the car and he wanted to tell me the story about how it happened; "I run" "Diaper" "Kitchen" "Owie" "Ice" "I cry" "Kiss". In between these words he would "uhhh", "errr", "aggg". He knows that there is more to the sentence but doesn't know what those words are. He must have told me this story five times while we were driving. He is growing in every facet of his life, physically, mentally, emotionally and even spirtually. He can now do the sign of the cross and he definitely leads us in prayers. Even snack time is prayer worthy in Bei's book. He is such a little cutie, I just love him so much.

12.14.2008

Elizabeth and Bei were in bed at the hotel eating Funyon's. Bei thought it would be fun to throw them over Elizabeth and into the garbage can. (Thanksgiving Weekend)The next Green Bay Packer! (Thanksgiving Weekend)

Mama's Boy(December - Home)

This weekend Bei and I headed over to my sister, Nanette's house to watch my niece, Regan, in the Nutcracker. Not to brag...BUT my niece was absolutely stunning in the performance.As you can see from the pictures above, they have nothing to do with this weekend. I forgot my camera at home!!! UGH! Bei sat through the entire performance and only had two shout outs. One for Clara, who lays in a bed during the first act. Bei shouted "Nigh, Night time". Then another time when Regan was on stage, he yelled "Yellow", there was a yellow costume. Right now he loves the colors, yellow and mornge, otherwise known as orange.

We went sledding for the first time. Bei absolutely loved it. At first, someone would always go with him on the sled. After a while we let him go down the hill by himself, and he would get into fits of giggles on the way down, then once he was at the bottom and he would say "I laugh", "I laugh". Believe me ,we noticed your belly laughing! He was so darn adorable, I wish I would have had it on tape.

He also was in his first snowball fight, which he thoroughly dominated his two 16 year old cousins, Ben and Luke and his 14 year old niece Elizabeth. They were such champs with him, but there were a few times, I think they were using him as a shield from each other.

And then of course, we had to teach him how to do snow angels. He loved spending time outdoors.

This was a fun weekend and one that Bei had been looking forward to for over two weeks. We had gone to Aunt Nanette's for Thanksgiving and he would say in the car "Aunt Nanette's home", yes he can say "Nanette" really well. So I finally told him "We will go to Aunt Nanette's house in two weeks". Well that was all I heard for the past two weeks. As it drew near we tried to tell him one week, but he would yell back "two weeks". Okay, chief, it is two weeks!

12.09.2008

After dinner, the girls, Bei and I went into the hot tub. Bei loves going under the water! He closes his eyes and mouth and plugs his nose and then I dunk him!

On Saturday, Dan's sister Julie came to visit with her daughters. Bei would walk around and point to any one of the girls and say "lap" and then proceed to snuggle in to their lap. He is a charmer.

Last week we painted Christmas masks with the Huckleberry Clan.

Look who has footie pajama's? Yeah! There is hope, yet tonight Bei is sleeping in his motorcycle pants...I would like to have a burning party for those. Every day we go through the same scenario. I'm getting him ready for the day, putting on his clothes and he says "motorcycles". I say "no", and he says "motorcycles are for nigh nigh". Yep! so why are we going through this every day??? Two year olds!!!

12.02.2008

Elizabeth joined us at the pool. Afterwards, Bei just climbed into her lap in our hotel room. He is a cuddler!

We were demoted to the kiddie pool! It was a shorter slide ride, but we still had a great time!

We got to the top of the slide to find out that only one person can go at a time, that included a 2 year old boy. No way! Rules are made to be broken.

The oldest and youngest together from my side of the family. Taylor is 18 years old and will be attending University of Minnesota in the fall.

Bei and I headed over to my sisters in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. I told my sister that I would come and help her. I think I was more of a hindrance than a help, but I'm still working on the multi-tasking mom thing. Dan came on Thanksgiving day and we stayed until Saturday. It was a really nice time.

I recently weight Bei and he is 24 lbs! Yeah! I can tell that he is putting on weight because he is getting heavier for me to carry. He recently recognized the letter "s" in words and he over emphasizes them. It is no long school butt, but school bussssch. At times he sounds like he is going to slobber on you, because there is so much slurping going on,when a word ends in S. The best way to describe it is to put the beginning of Arnold "Schw"arznager on any word that ends in s. The word "This" sounds like "Thischw".

He loves to spell his name "B E I", okay I do the actual writing, but he loves to say it over and over. This week, I'm teaching him his last name is Krueger. He hasn't learned to spell it yet, he just needs to understand it doesn't just end at B E I. Won't he be suprised when he learns his real name is Daniel. Poor kid, will be so confused!

Plus, he loves to count. Everything we do, we count count count. Walk up the steps we count, put dishes away, we count, steps to the table from the stove we count. He usually will say 1 2 4 5. He is always forgetting the 3, but I think it is pretty good that he loves to count. The other neat thing is he loves shapes, he can identify most shapes. Circles, square, triangle (you wouldn't be able to distinquish that is what he is saying, but I know Bei-ese), diamond, heart, star and he is just learning rectangle. The thing I gather about this kid is that he enjoys learning. He has the attention span to sit and focus on whatever is in front of him. And most of the times he initiates the learning. Now, I hate to write anything favorable because every time I do, it all stops. Remember, how I bragged about the 50 kisses a day? The very next day the kisses stopped and it has been pretty dry since then! Remember, when I bragged that he was sleeping through a thunderstorm that had me jumping out of my skin? He woke up right after that, not because of the storm, but because he had a fever, but it was the same outcome. We were up all night. The other night one of the parents that we traveled to China with, emailed me, and updated me on her daughter since she has been back home. One of the things that she mentioned was that her daughters night terrors were becoming less frequent as time went on. I wrote back and said Bei had never experienced night terrors. Yes, you guessed it, I heard it start lightly in his sleep and then it just continued to get worse until he was into a full cry and sobbing mode.

One last story, over Thanksgiving, one of the statements that I commonly use in our home came back to haunt me. "It is not a toy" is one of my favorite sayings. I use it when Bei wants to play on the computer and the camera or do something dangerous like use adult scissors.

Saturday morning, Bei wanted to walk on my sisters treadmill. We had done it the night before, we would walk on the treadmill, stop and then let the belt carry us off to the floor. What could go wrong? It is similar to a toy... Anyway, I put Bei in the middle and then I stood with my feet on the outer edge of the treadmill belt. I held his arms, so that he wouldn't fall and thought I had everything under control. So walk up the treadmill we would go and then ride it til it brought us back to the floor. We were doing this for about 5 minutes when all of a sudden "Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" My foot that only had a sock on it, had gone between the belt and this plastic thing that held the belt on . It hurt!!!! Man...I wanted to swear and cry! But I restrained myself on both accounts due to my little guys presences. I was really worried that it had severed my pinky toe or it was just hanging by a little bit of skin. I finally gained enough courage to take off my sock and my toe was still attached, but it was a dark purple and bleeding in multiple places. I thought I would show my bewildered son why I was hopping around and yelling owie, so I stuck out my foot for him to see mommie's owwie. And I guess Bei did what any normal 2 year old would do, and he grabbed my bloody moosh mash toe, and yanked it back and forth!!!! Okay, son...no medical school for you, your bedside manner is just too barbaric...back to engineering school for you. Dan went upstairs with Bei in his arms and my mom asked why Bei was crying? Dan calmly said because Liz is crying...okay the grabbing of the toe, put me over the edge and I cried. Now that my toe is cleaned up, I realize that my toe was never close to be severed and it is somewhat of a superficial cut and is healing quickly. Oh yeah...I almost forgot to mention, someone in my family (I married him) kept mentioning after the incident "you know Liz, treadmills are not toys." Ahh...thanks Dan, I usually tell Bei that before he gets hurt...